Revealing the relationship between the natural world and the everyday lives of people

Category: Asian Carp Invasion

The Environment Report has been covering the introduction of the Asian Carp species since January of 2000, when catfish farms in the south were importing them to control pests. The fish have since spread throughout the Mississippi River system. Millions of dollars of taxpayer money has been spent to try to keep these foreign species from swimming into the Great Lakes. Some scientists say their presence in the Great Lakes would be an “ecological disaster.” Today, evidence of an Asian Carp species was found above an electric barrier designed to prevent their movement into the Great Lakes.

Asian Carp can weigh up to 100 pounds and are notorious for jumping out of the water and injuring boaters.
(Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

The US Supreme Court has turned
down a request from Michigan and
other Great Lakes states. They
wanted the locks in a canal to
be closed immediately. That man-made
canal artificially connects the
Mississippi River system and the
Great Lakes. For now at least,
those locks will stay open to cargo
traffic. This fight is all about
a fish, a type of Asian Carp, that
many people don’t want to get into
the Great Lakes. Lester Graham
spoke with David Jude about the
threat of the fish. Jude is a
research scientist and fish biologist
at the University of Michigan:
http://environmentreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/interview_graham_012010.mp3

Transcript

The US Supreme Court has turned
down a request from Michigan and
other Great Lakes states. They
wanted the locks in a canal to
be closed immediately. That man-made
canal artificially connects the
Mississippi River system and the
Great Lakes. For now at least,
those locks will stay open to cargo
traffic. This fight is all about
a fish, a type of Asian Carp, that
many people don’t want to get into
the Great Lakes. Lester Graham
spoke with David Jude about the
threat of the fish. Jude is a
research scientist and fish biologist
at the University of Michigan:

Lester: We keep hearing if this fish gets into the Great Lakes system, it will be devastating for the ecology of the lakes, ruin the commercial and recreational fishing. What is it that all these people think this Asian Carp fish will do to the Great Lakes?

David Jude: Well, I am sure they all watch the video where the fish are jumping out of the river, in the Illinois River, and harming some biologists and some people that are there.

Lester: Smacks them in the head!

David: Yes, so they are very concerned about that. And then biologists are concerned about the fact that they have taken over the river there, they are very voracious feeders, and so they have really crowded out a lot of other fish in the river. So there are a lot of things that are going on with regards to impacts on humans as well as impacts on fish communities that we certainly don’t like.

Lester: And these are big fish, they are up to 100 pounds.

David: Exactly.

Lester: There’s this electric barrier in place in the canal that is supposed to prevent these Asian Carp from swimming from the Mississippi River into the Great Lakes. Environmentalists say that there’s still too much of a risk, too many scenarios where the fish could get through because of flooding or some other scenario, and that canal should be closed. The Obama Administration is fighting that, the state of Illinois if fighting that, they say we need that open. There’s barge traffic carrying steel and rock and gravel and grain, all of this seems to be coming down to money. Is money the right measure when we’re looking at this situation?

David: No, it’s not. I mean traditionally, we’ve gone into the, a lot of these decisions are made and the environmental costs are not taken into consideration. The costs of having that canal open are going to be very very high and, uh, and you have to balance it against what the sport fishery and the commercial fishery is the Great Lakes is going to be because once they get in there it’s going to be a very detrimental impact on them.

Lester: This fish is knocking at the door, we’re not even sure it’s not already in, so, is there a certain inevitability that this fish is going to be in the Great Lakes and we should just start making plans to deal with it?

David: Well, I don’t think it’s inevitable and I think if we did stop them and somehow were able to shut down the Chicago Ship and Sanitary Canal and prevent that avenue, we’d go a long way toward preventing them from coming in. The other avenue for them getting in, of course, is people that like to eat them and they might bring them in and stock them. So, I think we should be doing everything we can right now to stop them, I mean this is our opportunity to do that. But, the other part of it is, because they’re so close, and because as you know there probably could be some in the Lakes already, you know, we should be prepared to have some plans on what we might want to do to try to, you know, focus on some of these optimal spawning sites and see what we can do to keep their populations down there.

Lester: David Jude is a research scientist and fish biologist at the University of Michigan. Thanks for coming in!

A big monster of a fish is at
the center of a US Supreme Court
case. Asian Carp are making their
way up the Mississippi towards the
Great Lakes. Michigan’s Attorney
General filed a lawsuit asking the
Court to close a Chicago canal in
order to keep the carp out. The
shipping industry says, ‘no can do.’
Jennifer Guerra has
a closer look at what’s at stake:
http://environmentreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/feature_guerra_011810.mp3

Transcript

A big monster of a fish is at
the center of a US Supreme Court
case. Asian Carp are making their
way up the Mississippi towards the
Great Lakes. Michigan’s Attorney
General filed a lawsuit asking the
Court to close a Chicago canal in
order to keep the carp out. The
shipping industry says, ‘no can do.’
Jennifer Guerra has
a closer look at what’s at stake:

There’s one way to look at this as a purely economic story. In one corner you’ve got the people who ship cargo by water.

“Lynne Munch, senior vice president regional advocacy of the American Waterways Operators.”

She says, if the Illinois is forced to close two of the locks in the Chicago canal permanently, more than 17 million tons of cargo will have to be shipped by truck instead of barge, and hundreds of jobs will be lost.

“One company alone has reported that they will lose 93 jobs next year if the locks are closed. One of our towing companies estimates they’ll lose more than 130 jobs if the locks are closed.”

In the other corner, you’ve got the seven billion dollar tourism and fishing industries.

“Oh hi, I’m Eric Stuecher, I own a company called Great Lakes Fishing Charters.”

Stuecher takes people out on the Great Lakes and in rivers across Michigan. Salmon, Trout, Perch, you name it, he’ll help you fish it. But if the invasive Asian Carp get into the Great Lakes?

“It would probably cost me the business. They’ll eat anything they can get in their mouths, to the demise of so many of our other game fish.”

So that’s the economic side of the story. But what if we told you there’s more at stake here than dollars and cents.

“In terms of environmental impact, the Asian carp have the potential to seriously disrupt the Great Lakes ecosystem.”

That’s Marc Gaden with the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission. He says there are already a lot of pests in the Lakes.

“There are 180 non-native species in the Great Lakes, many of which came in accidentally. Precisely two of them can be controlled. That’s it. So that’s why biologists and others are very, very concerned about the Asian carp. Once they get in, the cat’s out of the bag.”

Asian Carp were first brought to the states by Southern catfish farmers. The carp escaped the South in the 1990s because of flooding and have been making their way north ever since. These fish are huge. They can grow to four feet and weigh up to 100 pounds, and they reproduce like crazy. In some areas, they reproduce so much that by weight they account for more than 90 percent of the fish in the Mississippi River system.

So you can see why people around the Great Lakes don’t want them.

That’s why Gaden and a lot of other scientists say we should somehow block the man-made canal that connects the big rivers to the Great Lakes for barges carrying cargo.

“We need to be open to saying, just because we’ve been moving goods on the canal by barge for decades and decades, doesn’t mean we need to continue to do it that way. Is there a better way to do it? Can we shift it to rail?”

Gaden and others have been arguing for 15 years to get some kind of permanent barrier built in order to stop invasive species from moving from one ecosystem to another.

“The government agencies that are responsible for doing things on that canal are not moving at the speed of carp, they’re moving at the speed of government. And we don’t have a minute to spare.”

That’s because new DNA tests suggest that Asian carp have moved well beyond the electric barrier meant to keep them out of Lake Michigan.

Related Links

Some biologists worry the Asian Carp will destroy the four-billion dollar fishing industry in the Great Lakes if it gets in. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

There is a man-made canal that connects
the Mississippi River system with the Great
Lakes. The Chicago Ship and Sanitary Canal
makes shipping cargo between the waterways
possible. It also makes it possible for invasive
pests in the water to invade both systems.
The big concern right now is a big, nasty group
of fish known as Asian Carp that’s already
invaded the Mississippi and some of its
tributaries. An electric barrier has been built
in the canal to try to stop the fish from getting
into the Great Lakes. Lester Graham talked with
Jennifer Nalbone about the problem. She’s the
Director of Navigation and Invasive Species with
the environmental group Great Lakes United:
http://environmentreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/interview_graham_102309.mp3

Transcript

There is a man-made canal that connects
the Mississippi River system with the Great
Lakes. The Chicago Ship and Sanitary Canal
makes shipping cargo between the waterways
possible. It also makes it possible for invasive
pests in the water to invade both systems.
The big concern right now is a big, nasty group
of fish known as Asian Carp that’s already
invaded the Mississippi and some of its
tributaries. An electric barrier has been built
in the canal to try to stop the fish from getting
into the Great Lakes. Lester Graham talked with
Jennifer Nalbone about the problem. She’s the
Director of Navigation and Invasive Species with
the environmental group Great Lakes United:

Jennifer Nalbone: They are just incredible eaters, and they get as big as 3 to 4 feet, 80 to100 pounds when mature. And they are just prolific. Some species, the females can produce over 1 million eggs in their lifetime. So the fear is, like they’ve done in the Mississippi River Basin, they’ll get so big, they’ll have no predators, they’ll eat so much food, and there’ll be so many that they’ll basically take over the ecosystem. In some areas, where they’ve invaded, upwards of 90% of the river’s biomass is carp.

Lester Graham: You’ve probably seen this fish on videos or something like that – they’re the ones that as a boat passes by, they’ll jump out of the river, and sometimes even hit the boaters.

Nalbone: I admit, the first time I saw a video of the jumping silver carp, I was so startled I laughed at it. But there’s nothing funny about 50, 60, 70 pounds of fish flying at you when you’re going 20 miles an hour. It could kill someone.

Graham: Now, there’s this electric barrier in place that actually shocks the water so the fish is discouraged from coming into the area. But now there’s concern that the fish has invaded a nearby river, the Des Planes River, that’s very close to this canal. So, why’s that a problem?

Nalbone: Our concern is with flooding. Just last year, we saw major floodwaters in the Des Planes River, where floodwaters connected the Des Planes and the Chicago Sanitary Ship Canal in streams of water several feet deep. And carp could be carried into the Chicago Sanitary Ship Canal in those floodwaters.

Graham: So, what are you proposing? How could we stop the fish from going any further?

Nalbone: Well, the long-term solution is hydrologic separation of the Mississippi River Basin and the Great Lakes Basin. Army Corps of Engineers has been authorized to study that problem, but that’s a multi-year project. Right now, what we’re concerned about are floodwaters this fall. We are pressing that the Army Corps of Engineers put in place sandbags or berms in the low points between the Des Planes and the Canal. And also fill in some of the culverts in the IMN Canal that connect to the Chicago Sanitary Ship Canal.

Graham: Now, I’ve watched this situation for years – long before the Asian Carp invaded the Mississippi River system – and I’m wondering, even if further millions of dollars are spent, to try to put up barricades or stop this fish, whether it’s simply inevitable that this fish will get into the Great Lakes.

Nalbone: Well, this is a battle against time right now. If we can block the future floodwaters from the Des Planes – which is probably our biggest hole in our defense right now – and plug the culverts in the IMN, we can buy ourselves some good time. But we won’t be out of the woods until we separate the Mississippi and the Great Lakes Basin. But we can’t let this invasion happen. It would be, perhaps, the greatest anticipated ecological tragedy of our time. So, I don’t think that inevitable is an option. We have to get it done.

Graham: Jennifer Nalbone is with the group Great Lakes United. Thanks, Jennifer.

Related Links

Dr. John Holden from Rockford, Illinois is the CEO of Heartland Processing, which aims to convert millions of tons of Asian carp into pet food, fishmeal and fish oil. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

There are rivers in the Midwest that are just flush with fish. Normally, that would be great, but these are two species of invasive Asian Carp – and they shouldn’t be there in the first place. These foreign fish breed so quickly and grow so large, they push out native fish species. There are entrepreneurs who dream of getting rid of Asian carp. Shawn Allee looks at what they’ve cooked up and whether it could do any good:
http://environmentreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/feature_allee_042009.mp3

Transcript

There are rivers in the Midwest that are just flush with fish. Normally, that would be great, but these are two species of invasive Asian Carp – and they shouldn’t be there in the first place.
These foreign fish breed so quickly and grow so large, they push out native fish species. There are entrepreneurs who dream of getting rid of Asian carp.
Shawn Allee looks at what they’ve cooked up and whether it could do any good:

One businessman wants to take on Asian carp.

He’s John Holden and he started up the brand-new Heartland Processing company.
When I visit his factory in central Illinois, Holden walks me around his machines.

They transform fresh carp into fish oil and dry fishmeal. Holden says the fishmeal might make good pet food.

He’s tested it his own dog.

“He just inhaled it. You got more of that for me?”

Unfortunately, there are no carp today – and I have to settle for a dry-run demo.

John Holden is a doctor by trade, but he started his business after he watched Internet video of carp in the Illinois River.

“I went onto YouTube, and I said, this is nuts.”

“What did you see when you went onto YouTube?”

“Fish jumping like it was boiling water. The most poignant one was the department of natural resources one. All of a sudden they’re jumping out of the river, and smacking the DNR people.”

Actually, a guy from the state Department of Natural Resources is on-hand to vouch for this. He’s Chris McCloud.

“We’ve had conservation police have their teeth knocked out.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Oh no.”

McCloud says the state wants to cut back the carp population – not out of some vendetta, but because silver and big-head Asian carp pretty much took over the Illinois river from native fish.

“It basically says, let’s see what this can do and then determine how much processing would be needed to make a dent in a population that’s so voracious.”

Now, my question is: Will massive, commercial harvesting of carp really work? I mean, the Illinois river’s 275 miles long, and I’ve seen videos that it’s thick with Asian carp.

To get an informed opinion, I head to the Illinois Natural History Survey.

Kevin Irons works there – he tracks carp populations along the Illinois River.

“As biologists we’re very encouraged by the Heartland Processing plant and commercial fishermen that are taking the fish out. From some of the research we’ve looked at, the only way we can reduce the numbers is by commercially harvesting them”

Irons walks me through his argument.

To start, he opens a freezer.

“These are the ones that will jump out and hit ya.”

“This one’s like 2.5 feet long.”

“That’s a relatively small one. There are many that are 3-4 feet long.”

Irons says the two troublesome varieties of Asian carp are native to Russia, the Mideast and China.

They’re small in China – they’re super-sized here.

“Nowhere else in the world do we have populations like this because they’re over-fished everywhere else. People in the YangTze River rarely see them over 4-5 pounds because they’re taken soon in their life cycles.”

How big can they get here?

“The world record was taken in St. Louis – nearly a hundred pounds.”

Irons says Chinese and other ethnic food markets in the US sell Asian carp but most Americans won’t touch them.

“We might go to a restaurant and get a walleye or perch fillet – they’re boneless and they’re beautifully done. These can be just as tasty, but they have bones. My wife, if she gets a bone in her fish, she’s just about done; she doesn’t want to mess with the bones. We’re pretty spoiled.”

Irons says if most Americans won’t eat Asian carp, maybe processors like Heartland can pick up the slack by making them into pet and animal feed.

It might not eliminate carp, but Irons says it might get darn close.

If it works too well – and Heartland runs out of fish on the Illinois River – Irons says there are plenty of carp waiting for processing in the Mississippi and other rivers.

Related Links

Asian Carp is one species that is very dangerous to the Great Lakes ecosystem (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

Nature never made a connection between the nation’s big rivers and the Great Lakes. But Chicago did. A canal was dug connecting the Mississippi River system – including the Missouri, the Ohio and all their tributaries – to all of the Great Lakes at a point on Lake Michigan. It opened up commercial shipping to the interior of the nation.
But it also opened up both bodies of waters to aquatic life you don’t want traveling back and forth. Invasive species such as the zebra mussel have traveled from one to the other. Asian Carp have already caused havoc in the Mississippi. Some biologists worry the Asian Carp will destroy the four-billion dollar fishing industry in the Great Lakes if it gets in. There’s an electric barrier in place, but some people don’t think that’s enough.
Joel Brammeier is with the environmental group Alliance for the Great Lakes. His group is proposing a barrier that will separate the Mississippi system from the Great Lakes completely, to stop those invasive species. He talked with Lester Graham about the barrier:
http://environmentreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/interview_graham_020209.mp3

Transcript

Nature never made a connection between the nation’s big rivers and the Great Lakes. But Chicago did. A canal was dug connecting the Mississippi River system – including the Missouri, the Ohio and all their tributaries – to all of the Great Lakes at a point on Lake Michigan. It opened up commercial shipping to the interior of the nation. But it also opened up both bodies of waters to aquatic life you don’t want traveling back and forth. Invasive species such as the zebra mussel have traveled from one to the other. Asian Carp have already caused havoc in the Mississippi. Some biologists worry the Asian Carp will destroy the four-billion dollar fishing industry in the Great Lakes if it gets in. There’s an electric barrier in place, but some people don’t think that’s enough. Joel Brammeier is with the environmental group Alliance for the Great Lakes. His group is proposing a barrier that will separate the Mississippi system from the Great Lakes completely, to stop those invasive species. He talked with Lester Graham about the barrier:

Joel Brammeier: Well, ecological separation means no species moving between
the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes. When you consider the problem of
invasive species, unlike chemical pollution, which you can reduce to a certain
safe level, there is no safe level of invasive species. Once two get in, they can
reproduce, and the damage is done, and there’s no going back. So, an
ecological separation means stopping fish, and eggs, and other critters from
moving back and forth between the two systems.

Lester Graham: How do you do that when there’s so much commercial traffic
and recreational boating, and just the water flowing through?

Brammeier: Well, in our research, we found that tech fixes – electrical barriers,
sound barriers, blowing bubbles through the water to try and deter fish from
moving – those things can reduce the risk. But for invasive species, risk
reduction really isn’t enough – you need 100% protection. And to do that, we’re
probably looking at some physical barrier that prevents water and live organisms
from moving between those two great watersheds.

Graham: I can imagine the commercial shippers are not thrilled about that.

Brammeier: Well, I think it remains to be seen. Nobody’s quite sure where the
best place is to put a barrier. We discussed about half a dozen different
scenarios under which you could implement that kind of separation. The
Chicago waterway system does support about 25 million tons, give or take, a
year of commercial commodity traffic – and that’s a significant amount. The
reality is that most of that cargo is internal to the Chicago waterways. So, there
isn’t a huge exchange of cargo between the Chicago waterway and the Great
Lakes. And that’s a good thing. That means we have opportunities to actually
split the system back to the way it historically was, and at the same time, solve
our invasive species problem.

Graham: Now, we can see how that would benefit the environment, but how
would it affect the economy?

Brammeier: Well, again, going back to this issue of commercial navigation. If we
create a separation in this system that has a minimal impact on most of the cargo
in the Chicago waterway, we’re really talking about potentially a very small
impact. And, frankly, there’s an opportunity here to create a benefit for
commodity movements as well. A lot of the cargo transfer facilities on the south
side of Chicago are outmoded, outdated, and not competitive. And, any
investment in this kind of project that changed that and also allowed cargo to
move more efficiently and created new port facilities, could have that kind of
benefit, besides protecting the Great Lakes from invasive species.

Transcript

A stronger electric barrier
to keep an invasive fish out of the
Great Lakes is set to be turned on.
But people who travel past the
underwater barrier are worried about
electric shocks. Chuck Quirmbach
reports:

This barrier is supposed to keep Asian carp from getting into the Great Lakes.

Those fish escaped from Southern fish farms years ago. They’ve spread up the Mississippi river.
Now they’re near a canal that connects the Mississippi system with the Great Lakes.

Biologists worry the big fish would ruin Great Lakes fishing and the Lakes’ ecosystems. Start up
of ‘The Stronger Barrier’ was delayed because of concerns the electric current could hurt crews
on barges and people on recreational boats as the vessels passed by.

U.S. Coast Guard Captain Bruce Jones recently gave thumbs-up to running the new barrier at
low power.

“ We believe it will continue to keep the Great Lakes protected from carp through the winter, until
spawning season starts.”

But biologists don’t think the barrier will work well enough at low power. And barge operators
don’t want it on at all. They’ll be discussing the concerns at a meeting in Chicago in January.

Transcript

There are invasive fish swimming their
way toward the Great Lakes. If they get in,
they could swallow up a multi-billion dollar
sport fishing industry. Mark Brush reports,
officials are investing millions of dollars
to keep Asian Carp out of the Great Lakes:

Asian Carp were imported by fish farms in Mississippi and Arkansas to control algae.
But the fish escaped during floods. They swam out of the fish ponds, and into the Mississippi
river. And they’ve been moving north ever since.

(sound of boats)

Thad Cook is on a tributary of the Mississippi River in Illinois. This river is more than
400 miles upstream from where Asian Carp first escaped the fish farms.

Cook is looking
for two types of Asian Carp known as Silver and Bighead Carp. It turns out t’s not hard to find them. He dips an electrified pole into the water – and the fish jump right out of the
river and into the boat.

(sound of fish flopping in boat)

Cook is with the Illinois Natural History Survey. His group, along with several others,
has been making trips like this one for years. They’ve been keeping a close eye on where
the fish are going. He takes a guess at how big this fish is.

“No he’ll go… uh.. he’s probably…”

“Hold him out there Jimmy!”

“Yep, six, seven, eight, nine, ten pounds.” (Laughter)

His fish story could have gone a lot further. Some types of these Carp can get up to a
hundred pounds. There aren’t many fish that can compete with an appetite like that.

Biologists are finding that these carp are pushing native fish species aside as they spread
north through the Mississippi River system. And some fear it’s only a matter of time
before they swim their way into the Great Lakes.

David Jude is a fisheries biologist with the University of Michigan.

“I’m very concerned about what impact they would have in the Great Lakes because
they’re planktovores which means they filter zooplankton from the water column. And, they’re just huge fish. And so they have the potential for having
a tremendous impact on our ecosystems.”

He says the silver and bighead carps are filter feeders. They pass up eating smaller fish –
and head straight for the bottom of the food chain.

Jude says if Asian carp get in, it’ll make a bad situation worse. The Great Lakes are
already losing zooplankton from other invasive species. Asian Carp could
destroy a 4 billion dollar a year sport fishing industry.

(sound of canal)

And here is where the battle line is being drawn. The fish have been spotted thirty miles
downstream from this spot on the Chicago Ship and Sanitary Canal. A century ago,
engineers blasted through solid rock to connect the Great Lakes with the Mississippi
River system.

Chuck Shea is with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

“Any type of fish that would want to move between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi
river basin – has to pass through the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal – there’s no other way to swim through. So, they have to come through this body of water we’re standing in front
of right now.”

Shea is in charge of the construction and maintenance of two electric fish barriers along this canal.
When this barrier is online, machines will pulse electricity into the water. The electric current shocks
the fish – making them swim away.

This barrier hasn’t been turned on yet. There have been delays due to funding shortages. And they’re still
doing safety testing with the Coast Guard.

Right now, the only thing that would keep the carp from getting into the Great Lakes is a temporary electric
barrier built six years ago.

The good news is that there still seems to be a little time. Biologists say, so far, Asian Carp haven’t moved any
closer than thirty miles from the barrier for the last couple of years.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links

The Asian Carp is a big eater… and it’s moving closer to
the Great Lakes. Great Lakes states are hoping to stop the carp with electric barriers on the Chicago Ship and Sanitary Canal. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams reports… a Congressional committee voted against operating money for the barriers:

Transcript

The Asian Carp is a big eater, and it’s moving closer to the Great Lakes.
Great Lakes states are hoping to stop the carp with electric barriers on the
Chicago Ship and Sanitary Canal, but as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Rebecca Williams reports a Congressional committee voted against operating
money for the barriers:

It’s estimated the Asian Carp is about 20 miles away from Lake Michigan.
Right now there’s a temporary electric barrier standing in its way, and the
Army Corps of Engineers is building a second, stronger barrier. Great Lakes
states are looking to Congress for money to operate the carp barriers, but a House-Senate
conference committee recently voted against any funding for them. Without federal funding the
state of Illinois will have to come up with the hundreds of thousands of dollars to operate and
maintain the barriers.

Marc Gaden is with the Great Lakes Fishery Commission.

“We think that this is actually a national problem. The carp escaped from the
southern United States and have been making their way northward and have been causing
destruction on their whole path, so this is something that’s more than just
a Great Lakes or even a state of Illinois issue.”

Gaden says two additional bills before Congress could provide money to
operate the barriers, but he says the carp might move faster than either of
those bills.

Transcript

Scientists across the region are expanding their arsenal of technology to fight invasive species. One research team hopes to use sound and bubbles to keep an invasive fish out of the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee has more:

For years, biologists worried Asian Carp could enter Lake Michigan through a canal near Chicago. The Army Corps of Engineers is building an electric barrier at the canal to block the carp’s progress.

But researchers at Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant are devising a back-up plan. Researcher Mark Pegg says new devices could shoo fish away with bubbles and sound.

“The bubbles themselves are causing a lot of turbulence in the water that the fish don’t like. On top of that, they’re emitting a really loud noise, at least to the fish anyway, so that’s sort of a one-two punch.”

Pegg says the combination of bubbles and sound works in another way too. Bubbles actually amplify underwater noise, so sound travels further. The Sea Grant team will continue testing the devices. In the meantime though, even if it works, the project might hit a roadblock: the existing barrier program has no extra money for the system.

Transcript

A new bill in Congress aims to ban the importation and
possession of a fish that threatens the Great Lakes. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports.

Biologists say if Asian carp ever get into the Lakes, the fish would do major
damage to aquatic life.

Even though the carp are already in some Midwest rivers, several states ban people from importing or having the fish. Wisconsin Republican Congress member Mark Green says the ban needs to be nationwide.

“There are some areas that don’t have Asian carp now. So by
banning the importation we at least hopefully stem the flow while we
take other steps.”

Steps like making sure a new publicly funded carp barrier is finished in a canal southwest of Chicago. A bill Green has introduced would add four types of Asian carp to a list of destructive species currently banned under federal law.

Green expects opposition from parts of the aquaculture industry. It’s generally thought that the Asian carp first entered Midwest rivers when they got away from fish farms during floods.